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It has been several months since the READI course on Interactive Teaching in Actuarial Science, and it feels a little bit like a dream, it was such a whirlwind experience. In this post I’ll try to collect some of my thoughts about how it went and what I learned.

On the first morning, I met my students for the first time at breakfast, and then we headed to the seminar room. The room had a projector, a small whiteboard, and a pair of flip charts, which worked well for what I had planned. I organized the students into groups of 5-8 people each to facilitate the discussion phases...

As a Faculty member, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be a student. I’m not talking about late night assignments, last minute study sessions, and cramped living spaces; I’m talking about forming communities of common interest, developing lifelong friendships, and exploring your passions.

In my 12 years as a faculty member, I have been involved in FASS (the Faculty, Alumni, Staff, and Students theatre company...

I attended the 2017 Actuarial Research Conference (ARC) and was fascinated by a talk that argued insurance companies should consider firearm ownership as a rating factor. Firearm presence has a stronger impact on claims than many other factors that are used. The reason for its absence is not efficacy but politics: there is opposition from groups that have a vested interest in more firearms being sold. I was intrigued and wanted to weave this kind of topic into my teaching.

Around the same time, I was finishing up the Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice modules, which examine...

I was invited to give a talk for Dan Wolczuk's seminar for UW instructors, and chose to talk about Assessment Design for Learning. You can view the presentation  and access the slides below. In it, I touch on several of the ways I design assessments in my courses to encourage student learning, including:

• Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning
• Incorporating high level questions into assessments
• Interactive tutorials...